WEST BLOOMFIELD, Michigan, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — A Michigan abortion center admitted in court last week that 11 women scheduled to abort their unborn children did not do so the day of a Red Rose Rescue.

That’s indescribably encouraging news for five pro-life advocates who entered the Women’s Center of Michigan, operated by abortionist Jacob Kalo, on December 2, 2017, to offer red roses, support and alternatives to abortion to women in the waiting room.

Monica Migliorino Miller, Will Goodman, Matthew Connolly, Patrice Woodworth and Robert “Doc” Kovaly were arrested after they refused to leave the abortion facility.

Three of them — Miller, Goodman and Connolly — are currently serving 45 days in jail.

“At the end of the day, it’s mission accomplished. They had 12 people turn away, 11 of them were scheduled abortions,” lawyer Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) told LifeSiteNews.

The number of mothers who were “no shows” or left the abortion center the day of the Red Rose Rescue was revealed during a court-ordered restitution hearing June 29, at which all five pro-life advocates were present.

“The abortionist had to admit under oath that many lives were rescued the day these courageous pro-lifers entered the abortion center waiting room,” Muise said.

The abortion center asked for more than $5,000 in “lost revenue” and $1,500 for attorney’s fees, according to an AFLC press release.

The prosecutor presented testimony and documentary evidence from the abortion center’s office manager that 12 women scheduled for appointments — 11 for abortions and one for a “post operative” procedure — “were turned away by the actions of the pro-lifers,” it stated.

“In fact, none of the 12 would return the abortion center’s calls — the center was desperately trying to reschedule the abortions.”

Muise argued the “harm was not recoverable” because the women could have decided to choose life instead of abortion. He also argued the specific request for lost profits and lawyers’ fees “was not warranted as a matter of law for this simple trespass case,” AFLC stated.

Judge Marc Barron of the 48th District Court agreed, and denied the prosecutor’s and abortion center’s request for restitution.

Barron also presided over the February trial in which a six-person jury took about a half-hour to convict the five pro-lifers of trespass and obstructing a peace officer.

The judge ordered a restitution hearing at the time and in March sentenced the pro-life advocates to eight days of community service and a $500 fine each, as well as one year’s reporting probation with the conditions to stay 500 feet from every abortion center in the U.S. and not contact each other.

Miller, executive director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, said at the time the sentence was unprecedented in its scope and severity.

“Even in the heyday of the Rescue movement, we never saw anything like this, really,” she told LifeSiteNews. “I can only come to the conclusion that the judge is in favor of legalized abortion, that he saw that the Red Rose Rescue was a threat to the practice of abortion.”

Muise is appealing the convictions in an August 22 hearing. He filed an emergency application to stay the sentences pending appeal.

However, it took three months for the court to deny the emergency application on June 15. That was a day after Barron sentenced Miller and Goodman to 45 days in jail.

The two had contended the probation order was unjust and a violation of their constitutional right to free assembly. On June 1, they went to Kalo’s abortion center — during which time Miller talked one woman out of having an abortion — and were arrested for breaching probation.

Barron also sentenced Connolly to 45 days in jail on June 29.

Like Goodman, Connolly is a full-time itinerate pro-life missionary and admitted to Barron he violated his probation, Muise said.

The pro-life rescuers “were very fortified when they heard through the restitution hearing that their actions had a direct effect,” said Muise.

Lynn Mills, president of Pro-Life Michigan who was at the restitution hearing, said all pro-life activists can be encouraged by the proceedings.

The judge said he could not “charge the Red Rose Rescue with restitution because there was a lawful protest going on,” Mills told LifeSiteNews. “So it was not just the Red Rose Rescue.”

That remark and the abortion center’s evidence “told us that we as a pro-life movement are effective,” Mills said. “We all need to be encouraged to be out there.”

Mills said Goodman, who refused bail conditions and stayed in jail until his trial, is due to be released at midnight July 5 and Miller on July 17. She thinks Connolly will be released around the end of July.

The growing Red Rose Rescue movement is inspired by Canadian pro-life activist and prisoner of conscience Mary Wagner, who has served almost five years in jail to date for her attempts to save women and children from the violence of abortion.

Natalia Broniarczyk, who is proudly “pro-abortion, not just pro-choice,” posted several photographs of the spray-painted slogans on her Facebook page with the comment, “Perhaps what has begun in Ireland is in Poland. We are anti-church because the church is anti-woman.” (Ireland voted in May to lift restrictions on abortion.)

Her profile picture displays a photograph of herself with a poster reading “Aborcja jest ok.” (Abortion is OK).

The vandalism occurred hours after the so-called “Polish Women’s Strike” held a small protest outside Poland’s parliament, or Sejm, in Warsaw. Broniarczyk was a speaker at Monday’s rally, telling the crowd that she was fed up with politicians who “on the orders of the Church” were creating an “anti-woman” abortion law and “forcing” Polish women to travel internationally to have abortions.

The “Zatrzymaj aborcje” (“Stop abortion”) bill, a citizens’ project signed by more than 830,000 Poles, was discussed in the Polish parliament on Monday. The bill seeks to remove an unborn child’s illness or disability as a condition for which he or she can be aborted.

Broniarczyk took issue with Kaja Godek, the chief architect of the bill, because she had not attended a disability rights rally.

“I’ve had enough of Kai Godek, who believes that she is for protection of life, but didn’t come to the RON (Parents of People with Disabilities) rally. F*** such protection of life.”

Also speaking at the pro-abortion rally was politician Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, who said the demonstrators’ task was to drive the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party from Poland. A far-left extremist, Scheuring-Wielgus sits in the Sejm as an independent.

The three damaged buildings included the curial offices of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, the rectory of the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the curial offices of the Dioccese of Warsaw-Praga.

Father Bogdan Bartołd told Polish media that he found the inscriptions shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday when he went to Mass. “Yesterday, when I came back from a concert around 9 p.m., they weren’t yet there,” he said.

He believed the graffitti was the work of opponents of the ““Zatrzymaj aborcję” bill, a suspicion at least partly borne out by Broniarczyk’s Facebook photographs and remarks.

One of Broniarczyk’s supporters told her on Facebook that she needs to think beyond the Emerald Isle.

“Ireland is not enough,” wrote Robert Nowak. “You have to be like Chile and Argentina. That's where the real anti-Catholic revolution is taking place.”

Others were unsure about the damage the pro-abortion activists wreaked upon the Catholic Church’s buildings.

“Vandalism is vandalism,” wrote Anka Kobierska. “It doesn’t matter what we are fighting for.”

Polish government stalling on ‘Stop abortion’ bill

WARSAW, Poland, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Polish pro-lifers voiced disgust after their government’s “Commission for Social and Family Policy” refused to implement the recommendations of the “Zatrzymaj aborcję” (“Stop abortion”) bill.

The pro-life bill, which would outlaw abortion of unborn children on the grounds that they are sick or disabled, is a “citizens’ project” signed by more than 830,000 Polish citizens and supported by the Catholic Church in Poland. In theory, a citizens project could become law in Poland if passed by parliament and signed by the president.

As the current government, formed by the populist Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS) party, is widely believed to be pro-life, supporters of the bill were hopeful that it would soon be made into law. However, after being passed on first reading, the bill has been in limbo for almost seven months.

On Monday, the committee responsible for examining the bill, the Social and Family Policy Commission, ended their inaction by sending it to an unsympathetic subcommittee.

“Almost all the deputies who were (appointed to it) spoke critically about the “Zatrzymaj aborcję” project,” Przemysław Sycz of the Polish Right to Life Foundation told LifeSiteNews.

“This subcommittee is a ruse ensuring that the bill will not be adopted soon.”

Sycz is afraid that the bill will again sit for months before members of the Polish parliament, or Sejm, are allowed to vote on it.

When the Commission chair asked that the subcommittee’s involvement in the project be put to the vote, Kaja Godek, leader of the “Zatrzymaj aborcję” committee, protested that it had not been possible to present the bill for a decisive vote for more than six months. She also pointed out that there is huge social support for the project.

In response, the vice chairwoman of the Commission, Magdalena Kochan of the PO (Citizens’ Platform) party, argued that the bill was an attempt to outlaw abortion under any circumstances and should be scrapped.

“The vice chairwoman did not behave very well,” Sycz told LifeSiteNews. “She refused (Kaja Godek) this law very nastily and contemptuously.”

In response, Anna Maria Siarkowska of PiS submitted an application for further work on the project. She said that, like many Polish women, she had participated in many demonstrations in favor of the right to life for all children from conception. According to the Polonia Christiana news blog, this gave lie to the suggestion by PO parliamentarians that all Polish women are demanding the freedom to kill their children.

Kochan’s suggestion was rejected by the Commission chair, Bożena Borys-Szopa, who pointed out that the bill had already passed its first reading in January.

However, it turns out that members of the Law and Justice (PiS) party aren’t supportive either.

“Local PiS deputies block us on their social media, Facebook, for example, when we ask them when unborn children will get legal protection,” Sycz revealed.

He said Borys-Szopa, a member of PiS, had also been contemptuous and arrogant toward the “Zatrzymaj aborcję” project, not even allowing one of its representatives to speak.

Now Sycz is wondering if the PiS party is as pro-life as it has advertised itself to Poland’s largely Catholic population.

“Have they lied to the voters again?” Sycz wondered. “Thanks to today’s trick by Bożena Borys-Szopa and her party colleagues, unborn children will continue to be killed every day with the full sanction of the law.”

Bartosz Gradecki, a PhD candidate in political science at London’s King’s College, says he has long been telling people that the Law and Justice party is not really pro-life.

“They’ve already blocked similar initiatives a few times, and they’re doing it again,” he told LifeSiteNews by email. “Since they always need an excuse for their behaviour so they can continue to pretend they’re pro-life to get the Catholic … vote, the subcommission trick might serve just that function.”

Gradecki surmised that the government might be hoping to prolong the issue until the next elections so that the new parliament will have to deal with it.

The Polish government is under pressure by foreigners to scrap the pro-life bill. In March, a group of self-identified “human rights experts” at the United Nations told the Sejm to reject it.

The UN working group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practice claimed that the "Zatrzymaj Aborcję” bill, if passed into law, would damage women’s health and violate Poland’s international human rights obligations.

Besides so-called “fetal abnormality,” the other circumstances under which abortion is currently permitted in Poland is if the unborn child is the result of a criminal act, or poses a severe threat to the life or health of his or her mother. As a result, there are usually fewer than a thousand legal abortions in Poland a year.

Canadian court allows ‘hate crime’ charge against Christian activist

TORONTO, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Christian activist Bill Whatcott is out on bail and out of a job after turning himself in to Calgary police June 22 to face a criminal charge in Toronto of wilfully promoting hatred against “the gay community.”

Toronto Police Service issued a Canada-wide warrant for Whatcott in May for the indictable hate crime offence after a two-year investigation into complaints made against Whatcott in 2016.

In 2013, the Supreme Court deemed two of Whatcott’s flyers hate literature when it ruled on his appeal of a Saskatchewan human rights tribunal judgment against him.

However, Whatcott’s criminal charge is significantly more serious.

“If I get convicted of this, it’s going to be a very low bar of what anyone can say,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Because they’re going to use it, they’re going to use it as a precedent for what the next Christian can say.”

“Powerful homosexual activist machine”

Whatcott, 51, described his Calgary arrest and various afflictions — a bout of pink eye, leg inflammation, food deprivation, harrowing holding cell experiences — and flight to Toronto on his web portal Free North America. It’s also described in a lengthy article on MassResistance.

Notably, Whatcott was met in Toronto by Sergeant Henry Dyck of 51 Division who “sported homosexual pride shoulder stripes, a homosexual pride emblem on his chest, and a homosexual pride bracelet,” he wrote.

“I just quietly prayed for strength that I did not have as it was obvious I was facing a powerful homosexual activist machine that encompassed the police, courts and Ontario government,” noted Whatcott.

He was released June 25 after a weekend in custody on $5,000 bail with several conditions.

These include not contacting Toronto activist lawyer Douglas Elliott, as well as two plaintiffs, gay bar owner Christopher Hudspeth and former Liberal MPP and openly homosexual George Smitherman, who brought a $104 million class action lawsuit against Whatcott and fellow “zombies” a month after the 2016 Pride Parade.

Three of the civil plaintiffs are also the criminal complainants against Whatcott, reported Daily Xtra.

Crown counsel Epstein told the court the plaintiffs received death threats after criminal charges against Whatcott were made public, Xtra noted.

Whatcott is also banned from distributing the pamphlet he and fellow “zombies” handed out at the 2016 Pride Parade, entering Toronto’s “gay” district, being within 500 meters of any Pride. He’s also been forbidden to leave Canada, and ordered to surrender his passport to authorities.

Crown asks for ban on speaking on homosexuality

However, Justice Rebecca Rutherford of the Ontario Court of Justice stopped short of granting the Crown request to ban Whatcott from speaking and writing on the topic of homosexuality.

Even though he feared he could be in jail for months until his trial date, Whatcott refused to agree to this condition.

He told lawyer Daniel Santoro, who represented him at the bail hearing on behalf of his lawyer Charles Lugosi, that he hated jail.

“One hour ago I had a psychotic threatening to punch me in the head, I went 24 hours without food, three out of four days I slept on concrete,” Whatcott wrote in Free North America.

“I don’t want to be here, but accepting a total gag order and agreeing to surrender the entire public narrative of this trial and the homosexual lifestyle to the homosexual lobby is too high of a price to pay.”

Santoro told the court Whatcott “had to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and he argued very well that the speech restriction was overly restrictive and unfair,” Whatcott wrote, and Rutherford agreed.

Whatcott loses oilfield job

When Whatcott returned to Alberta, he found out he’d lost his job as a oilfield bus driver, MassResistance reported.

Moreover, GoFundMe shut down the fundraising page his wife Jadranka launched, and according to Whatcott, told her she was banned for life.

The couple, who have two children, now have a fundraiser on GoGetFunding.

Whatcott’s next court appearance is July 23 at College Park, but it’s expected a lawyer will appear on his behalf to set a date for further disclosures of evidence.

“I feel that I must have done something right,” Whatcott told LifeSiteNews.

“My little zombie same-sex package simply had Gospel and medical information. For it to get under their skin like that you that you actually hit a nerve.”

“We are going to go after everyone who helped him,” Elliott said when he launched the suit in August 2016. “Every person, every church, every non-profit organization, everyone who helped this wicked man promote his hatred is going to be held accountable.”

Justice Paul Perell ruled in March 2017 Elliott could not claim defamation of an entire group, such as the Pride Parade participants, or the “LGTBTQ2SI Community,” or a sub-class of Liberals, but only of individuals.

But he also issued an order that Whatcott must disclose the names his fellow half “gay zombies” as well as those of “unidentified financial backers” who funded the group’s expenses.

Socialists win Mexican election in landslide, raising concerns for life and family

July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Mexico’s July 1 elections have delivered an overwhelming victory to a coalition of socialist parties headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, often known as “AMLO,” and his National Regeneration Movement, known commonly by its initials “MORENA.” The victory has been perceived as a cause for concern among pro-life and pro-family leaders in Mexico.

The president-elect appears to have won every Mexican state but one, and obtained an absolute majority vote of 53%, the highest vote total of any presidential candidate since 1982.

For the first time since 1997, it appears that a single political coalition will control both the executive branch and both houses of the national congress.

The victory has led to much concern among Mexican pro-lifers regarding the future of the country’s policies with regard to the right to life and the integrity of the Mexican family. Although López Obrador personally has tended to maintain a neutral stance regarding life and family issues, members of his MORENA party tend towards a radical leftism that is strongly sympathetic to legalized abortion and the LGBT political agenda.

The options open to pro-life voters in this year’s election were very limited. López Obrador’s most viable opponent, Ricardo Anaya, allied himself with a strongly anti-life socialist party, expressed acceptance of homosexual “marriage” and only weakly defended the right to life. However, prior to the election a coalition of pro-life activists published a statement endorsing Anaya as an alternative to Obrador.

The group, which called itself “Mexico, the Possible Good,” expressed its concern with MORENA’s perceived anti-life and anti-family tendencies, as well as what it called its “authoritarian populism.” Expressing their support for “respect for the dignity of the human person, for life, the family, religious liberty, and the right of parents to educate their children,” the signatories urged voters to vote for Anaya with the hope that he would be loyal to the pro-life and pro-family principles contained in the platform of his historically more conservative National Action Party.

Nonetheless, it seems far from certain that AMLO and MORENA will prove themselves to be strong opponents of life and family in the coming six-year presidential term.

Under López Obrador’s leadership, MORENA has entered into a coalition with the mostly Evangelical Protestant party “Social Encounter” (Encuentro Social), which unambiguously opposes abortion as well as homosexual “marriage.” The presence of the party in the coalition has raised eyebrows among AMLO’s own rank and file.

López Obrador himself has repeatedly said that he is respectful of all points of view on life and family issues, and ultimately intends to decide his policies regarding them by means of some form of consultation with citizens. He sees his alliance with the Social Encounter party as part of that consultative process.

The president-elect has called himself a “Catholic” in the past, although he prefers to refer to himself as a “Christian,” a term that seems calculated to endear him to the country’s Protestant minority.

France gives one of its highest honors to deceased abortion proponent Simone Veil

ANALYSIS

PARIS, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Sunday to Simone Veil, the woman who will go down in history as the sponsor of the country’s abortion law, as she received one of the nation’s highest honors when her remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris.

“Her battles were always driven by her concern for the most fragile,” Macron said.

Veil carried the abortion debate in the French Parliament in 1974 as Minister for Health under President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who along with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and Veil signed the text promulgating the law. Veil’s name is inextricably attached to what is now generally referred to as the “loi Veil,” the “Veil Act” that legalized “voluntary interruption of pregnancy” up to 10 weeks’ gestation.

The law also allowed for abortion until the end of a full-term pregnancy for “therapeutic” reasons.

Veil was called the most popular woman politician in France after the fateful debate that culminated with the abortion law on December 28, 1974, the feast of the Holy Innocents on the Catholic liturgical calendar. She had abandoned a successful career as a lawyer to go into politics, promoting “women’s rights” and European integration.

Many say that she was chosen to carry the abortion law – a cause mainly promoted by French feminists who famously signed the “Manifesto of the 343 bitches” claiming to have obtained illegal abortions in the wake of an abortion after rape trial – precisely because she was not active on that front. Moreover, Veil was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps where she was deported as a Jew together with her sister and her mother, who died there.

Her personal history, marked by the tragedy of the Shoah, made it difficult for abortion opponents to attack her. Their cause was all the more difficult because, as Veil recalled later in her memoirs, the Catholic Church’s hierarchy was mostly absent from the debate. She openly said that if the French bishops had taken up the fight the abortion law would not have passed.

Whether or not that’s the case, Veil is still mainly known today to the French for her role in the abortion debate and “her” law, which has undergone a number of changes and amendments that through the years transformed decriminalized abortion into a woman’s “right,” has made possible the slaughter of some nine million unborn babies in France since enacted in January 1975.

Give or take 10,000 or 20,000, the “loi Veil” has allowed the legal killing of 200,000 unborn children each year since then. Today, the elective procedure, either chemical or surgical, is fully refunded by taxpayer money.

Veil went on to be become president of the European Parliament in 1979, but that is not what she is mainly remembered for.

She died June 30, 2017. One year and one day later, she received the French Republic’s highest honor for its departed “Great Men” with her inhumation in the national “shrine” of the Pantheon, a proud monument built at the initiative of King Louis XV in the 18th century as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, patron of Paris. But that was never consecrated as such because of the French Revolution.

In 1791, the final building plans were scrapped, numerous windows of the original construction were obturated, and the semi-darkened space became a chilly and impersonal resting place for famous Revolutionaries, generals, artists, politicians, “Résistants,” scientists and writers who had served “the Homeland” – from Voltaire and Rousseau to Victor Hugo and Marie Curie, and now Simone Veil (and her husband Antoine).

The solemn ceremony of her entombment took place on Sunday morning – at Mass time – in the presence of Macron, former French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, and numerous officials from the main political parties, but not including Marine Le Pen’s “Rassemblement National.”

During a long speech, Macron said the decision to “pantheonize” Veil (less than a hundred famous Frenchmen lie there) “was that of all the French.” “It was what all French women and all French men tacitly and intensely desired,” he said. Not so, said French pro-lifers, who were incensed by what was objectively a lie.

Macron also honored Veil for her battle for legal abortion, saying she “fought for justice … for women who had been hurt in their flesh and in their soul by backstreet abortionists” (“angel-makers” in popular French), “for women who were obliged to hide their shame and their distress, whom she wrested away from their suffering in her admirable fight for the law on voluntary interruption of pregnancy … “

That women are hurt in their flesh and their soul does not suffer contradiction, but Macron did not mean in that way.

Instead, her law was the turning point after which abortion would no longer be considered an evil but an acceptable solution for distress and then a full-fledged right.

It is fashionable nowadays in France to promote the return to the original “Veil law.” It allows people with political or public ambitions discreetly to deplore the “excesses” of legalized abortion while refusing to fight abortion as such, even though nothing has ever been done, even when Veil was minister for health and later for social affairs, to implement the few restrictive measures in her law that have all been scrapped.

Her son, Antoine, recently told the Jesuit magazine Etudes that she probably was “circumspect” as regards certain developments of her law, but that she chose to remain silent because she “feared all kinds of instrumentalization of her words” – such as justifying the pro-life movement, perhaps?

The public honoring of Veil in the French Pantheon symbolizes present-day France’s attachment to legalized abortion.

But it is a profoundly coherent move. She is now in the company of Voltaire and Rousseau, who theorized the French Revolution of 1789, the matrix of all subsequent Revolutions and genocides as Solzhenitsyn showed. The infamous abbé Grégoire, who presided over the “civil constitution of the priesthood” during the French Revolution which, would send so many priests and religious to martyrdom, also lies there.

But most symbolically of all, Lazare Carnot has also been “pantheonized”. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety that officially ordered the “extermination” of the Vendée and its “brigands” who opposed the anti-Catholic Revolution of 1789. French historian Reynald Secher recently discovered the “little papers” signed personally by Robespierre, Carnot and others ordering what is no less than the Genocide of the Vendee.

That Simone Veil should have been laid to rest near his mortal remains is, indeed, very apt.

Priests correct German archdiocese for opening up intercommunion with Protestants

PADERBORN, Germany, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A group of local priests from the German Archdiocese of Paderborn published a statement yesterday critiquing their archbishop’s recent decision to implement the controversial German bishops' intercommunion guide that now permits Protestant spouses of Catholics, in individual cases, to receive Holy Communion on a regular basis. The priestly group, going under the name Communio veritatis, calls the decision by Archbishop Hans-Josef Becker of Paderborn “unacceptable.”

As the Austrian Catholic news service Kath.net reports today, Communio veritatis now quotes in its new document certain statements of doctrine and discipline, stemming from Church documents, and then comments on them. First, they state that “In order to be able to receive Holy Communion, one has to be a full member of the Catholic Church and one has to be in the state of Grace” (CCCC 291). Additionally if one denies one or several aspects with regard to the Sacraments, one loses the disposition to receive them on a regular basis (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II, 46). The priestly group then comments on this matter with regard to Protestant Christians, as follows: “It is part of the essence of Protestantism not to share the full Catholic belief in the Holy Eucharist.”

With reference to the recent remarks made by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller concerning the matter of canon 844 §4 CIC, which speaks about moments of “grave necessity” where non-Catholic Christians may receive Holy Communion, the priests say that “no diocesan bishop may declare the situation in a mixed marriage to be a grave emergency situation, in order to make possible the intercommunion.” As Brandmüller explained, these emergency situations relate to “extreme situations, such as war, deportations, and natural catastrophes,” the priests add.

As one important aspect of this canon, the priests stress that it states a non-Catholic Christian may receive help from a Catholic priest under the condition that a minister of one's own church “cannot be found.” (This finding is, of course, in Germany always the case, where there are many Protestant churches.)

Furthermore, the Paderborn priests point out that, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the receiver of Holy Communion has to be free of serious sin. Therefore, the priests say, “a Protestant in a true emergency situation would first have to be led to the Sacrament of Penance.”

As a last point, the priestly group insists that, “with regard to eternal salvation, there exists, in rather few exceptional cases, the possibility to admit individual non-Catholic Christians to the Sacrament of Penance, of Extreme Unction, and of the Holy Eucharist.” For this to occur, the priests explain, the above-mentioned conditions first have to be met. “It is the duty of each person loyally to observe them.” (see Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 56)

In conclusion, the priestly group states: “The circle of priests Communio veritatis remains determined to serve Jesus Christ loyally in everything, also, accordingly, the continuous Magisterium of the Catholic Church – for the salvation of souls.”

Communio veritatis was first formed in February 2018 and it has placed itself under the patronage of Pope John Paul II. It wishes to be a network of priests of the region of Paderborn in order to give mutual support and seek the possibility for an exchange of thoughts in a difficult historical situation. At the beginning, Communio veritatis had ten priests as members, but other priests from the Diocese of Paderborn later have shown interest in joining them. Father Frank Unterhalt of Brilon is now the leader of this group.

New ‘Holy League of Nations’ launching worldwide spiritual battle

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin, July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — National Rosary organizers from around the world are joining forces to create a new “Holy League.”

There have been a number of “Holy Leagues” in history, national allies coming together to protect Christendom from its political enemies. Now, inspired by the mass rosary prayer events of recent months, the organizers of the American “Rosary Coast to Coast” have invited Catholics around the world to join them in a worldwide 54 day novena beginning at 4 PM (Eastern Time) on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and culminating in a rosary on October 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

“The formation of the New Holy League of Nations declares a united front in the worldwide spiritual battle, defending the dignity of the human person--life, marriage, family, as well as religious liberty,” organizers of Rosary Coast to Coast stated in a press release on Tuesday.

Unlike the Holy Leagues of old, this army will not be using blades, arrows, or cannons.

“This ‘declaration of war’ is ‘not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” (Ephesians 6:12),” Rosary Coast-to-Coast explained. “Together we are calling upon God, through the powerful intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, to heal our countries and return them to Holiness.”

Every group that participates is asked to choose intentions specific to their nation.

Representatives from the national rosaries recently held in the UK, Ireland, and Australia, and a spokeswoman from Canada, have all confirmed with LifeSiteNews that their groups are participating in the New Holy League of Nations.

Jane Chifley of the “Oz [Australia] Rosary” wrote that Australia, which is 15 hours ahead of New York, will “light the match” by starting the novena first.

“Our [national] intentions for the world rosary will be family, rekindling of faith and continued Godly protection,” she stated.

The Oz Rosary, which was held on May 13, was a great success, taking place in over 252 locations. Organizers estimated that between 20,000 to 35,000 Australians took part.

Jennifer Paufler of Canada’s new “Rosary on the Coasts and Border for Life and Faith” group told LifeSiteNews that she had wanted her northern nation to pray the Rosary for Life and Faith ever since she read about the events in Poland, Italy, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Paufler contacted a “Holy League” spokeswoman when she first read of the global rosary plans.

“We’re hoping to receive support from our Canadian Bishops, and we are currently waiting to hear back from them,” she wrote.

New Holy League of Nations organizers say that, in addition to the above nations, they have representatives in Poland, Lebanon, India, Mexico, Panama, and other countries in Central and South America.

Preparations are well underway with over 400 related events registered across the United States alone.

I’m not really pro-life

I write for a pro-life website, I pray for the unborn, I act as an apologist defending the rights of the unborn whenever called upon on social media or out in the world. I vote for pro-life political candidates. I can’t stand Planned Parenthood, I lament Roe. V. Wade, and I push back against abortifacient contraceptives. I give to pro-life charities when I can.

Yet in spite of all of these things, I must ask for forgiveness.

I’m not really pro-life. I’m a hypocrite. I don’t practice what I preach.

If I really believed that the unborn were human beings, being murdered each day by the thousands, would I be afraid to talk about my beliefs in front of pro-choice family members and friends? Would I entertain the idea that a handful of (revolting and inexcusable) acts of violence against abortionists somehow invalidates real, intense pro-life activism? Would I fear even discussing how contraception plays a crucial role in the rise of abortion? (http://humandefenseinitiative.com/birthcontrol-sexualmorality/)

Would I spend so little of my money to help the victims of abortion, instead choosing to buy Starbucks drinks and new shoes and other things that don’t really matter? Would I care more about the tone taken by other pro-life activists than whether or not they’re speaking the truth? Would I turn my face away in distaste at photographs of tiny, dismembered children? Would I balk at those comparing abortion to the Nazi Holocaust?

Would I in any way condone the sexual revolution, even knowing the havoc it has unleashed? (https://www.halseynews.com/2017/02/23/right-sex-not-childs-right-life/) Would I ignore God, as though he wouldn’t care what my opinion was on the killing of his most innocent “little ones”? Would I seek to compromise with pro-choice activists? Would I present middle-of-the-road legislation not as a stepping stone to abolition, but as a solution?

Would I take the logically inconsistent and popular “pro-life with exceptions” stance? (http://futurefemaleleader.com/speaking-foundation-first-principles/) Would I make exceptions for the killing of the sick babies, who may die mere minutes after birth? Would I excuse the murder of babies who will grow up in poverty? What about the babies who were concieved in rape, or the babies who will have their grandfather as their biological father due to incest?

Would I ignore “radical” pro-life activists who are being arrested at abortion clinics due to their non-violent acts of civil disobedience? Would I be too nervous to share that “offensive” Facebook post, fearing what people would say?

I have done every single one of these things at various points in my pro-life journey. Every one.

It’s high time I realized that my cowardice and capitulation to evil has not brought people to truth. It has not improved the lot of my tiniest brothers and sisters. The pro-choice lobby has never given an inch to the good. The compromises we make on abortion, like every other issue with the far left tyrants, only go one way.

Sorry, pro-choicers. I’m through being a coward. Enough is enough.

I’ve heard it said time and time again that only one question matters in the abortion debate: “What are the unborn?”

The answer echoes in my head with the same familiarity. “If they’re human, we can never permit abortion. If they’re not, we have no reason to ever restrict it.”

I could hear the words, but my soul was blind to understanding them. And as frightening as it may be to go all in, to be a “radical” pro-lifer, to take the unpopular position, to fight a Goliath that seems impossible… perhaps that’s what I must be. Really pro-life. Pro-life, all in.

No one said truth was comfortable.

The unborn really are human beings.

The unborn really are being sacrificed to the pagan idol of self-interest and hedonism.

There are valid reasons for President Trump to be very upset with Canada’s Liberal government

July 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Canadians have been having a major national temper tantrum over President Trump’s imposition of tariffs. However, what has been missing in all the media reports are the numerous actions by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government seriously undermining US policies on a wide variety of issues.

Trudeau has been implementing extreme national and international pro-abortion policies while the US under Trump has been going in the exact opposite direction. In March 2017, Trudeau responded to Trump’s restoration of a substantially strengthened Mexico City policy by quickly promising $650 million Canadian taxpayer dollars to make up for the loss of US funding of international abortion. That was a direct slap in the face to the US policy.

At the United Nations Canada is now often voting and acting against the US on a wide variety of crucial issues. Canada is a leading advocate of the dangerous Paris Climate Change accord threatening the sovereignty of many nations while the US under Trump has withdrawn from the accord.

The Canadian government is ignoring its own immigration laws and welcoming radical Islamists rejected by the United States under Trump's new immigration rules. Trudeau is a strong proponent of the New World Order open borders movement while Trump has been urging Western nations, for the sake of their own security and preservation of Western culture, to not continue with that dangerous trend. Canada has passed a motion to ban criticism of Islam. Trudeau funds Muslim hate groups while demanding that any group that wants a summer student grant should attest that they support abortion rights. The Canadian government has even gone so far as to award convicted Islamist terrorist Omar Kahr, who murdered a US soldier, $10.5 million for a supposed violation of his Canadian Charter rights.

Trudeau has strengthened Canada’s relationship with the Communist dictatorship in Cuba while Trump has been going in the opposite direction because of the still ongoing serious violation of human rights in Cuba. Trudeau cancelled a long-term Canadian commitment to honor its NATO obligations by purchasing a good number of state of the art U.S. F-35 fighters and has left all the branches of the Canadian military in a beggarly position with no funding for long overdue equipment replacements.

There is much, much more. Justin Trudeau, like his father is also a public admirer of the Chinese Communist government, with its forced abortion and religious freedom crushing policies. Trump has been trying very hard to reign in the dangerous military and world economic domination ambitions of the Chinese.

Following is an American Thinker report on yet another policy by the Canadian government related to China that poses a genuine threat to the United States and to all Canadians. This is frightening stuff to read and it boggles the mind that a Canadian government could be so recklessly negligent about such a danger to US and Canadian security.

To me it seems that it is not Donald Trump who is harming the many decades long close relationship between the US and Canada. Justin Trudeau and his far-left Liberal government have been quietly and not so quietly at war with the United States since Trudeau became Prime Minister, implementing many pokes in the eye to the Trump presidency and US government policies. The provocation has been substantial.

Personally, I can’t blame Trump for being very upset with the Canadian government and, if anything, he has been quite restrained in calling out Trudeau for his many anti-American actions. Canadians elected this tyrant and can't seem to see that he represents a far, far greater threat to their freedoms, economic prosperity and sovereignty than Donald Trump could ever be.

Is this obscure Chinese company set to wreck America from the north?

By Kaya Forest and Sierra Rayne

July 3, 2018 (American Thinker) – While the United States and Australia, and the U.K. to a lesser extent, have taken strong action against Huawei – the Chinese networking, telecommunications equipment, and services company that has become the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world – Canada refuses to take any national security threats from this Chinese corporation seriously. Over the past decade, Huawei has integrated itself into all levels of Canada's private, academic, governmental, and political sectors to a degree most rational observers would have not so long ago thought impossible.

But according to the latest statements by Canada's federal Public Safety Minister and Liberal Party member of Parliament Ralph Goodale, Huawei "does not pose a risk to Canada's cybersecurity." Goodale's naïve view parrots that of Huawei Canada vice president Scott Bradley but stands in stark opposition to sentiment held by the U.S. national security establishment, as well as many former leaders of Canada's national security agencies. Other center-left politicians, such as former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall – whose provincial Saskatchewan Party was formed as a merger between Liberal Party and Progressive Conservative members – have held a similar line to Goodale over the past few years. Back in December 2012, Wall claimed that there was "nothing to fear from a deal with Huawei."

The 2012 U.S. congressional investigative report on Huawei, which Wall dismissed at the time and Goodale is apparently ignoring, paints a different picture. The report found great concern with the fact that under Chinese law, "Huawei would be obligated to cooperate with any request by the Chinese government to use their systems or access them for malicious purposes under the guise of state security." Testing programs, as Britain has enacted for Huawei's technologies being deployed in the U.K., were dismissed as futile and impractical by the congressional report, since it would be "virtually impossible" to find security flaws intentionally placed and well hidden in Huawei's products by the Chinese government. Confidential reports were also made to the committee by various private-sector representatives that "odd or alerting" behavior in Huawei technologies is well known.

Most problematic for Huawei is that the company acknowledges that the Chinese Communist Party maintains a Party Committee within Huawei, but Huawei officials refuse to discuss what the role or composition of the committee is. The founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, was a director of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Information Engineering Academy, and it is believed that his close connections to the PLA continue, a position bolstered by the fact that Huawei admits providing ongoing technology to the PLA but will not discuss the nature of the relationship.

As Huawei and other state-linked Chinese companies continue to penetrate into and begin dominating strategic sectors of the Canadian economy, the problems are not confined to Canadian national security. Because of the close academic, private sector, and governmental relations between Canada and the United States on a number of defense related issues, what happens in Canada affects not only Canada. It is not just telecommunications traffic originating or terminating in Canada that is vulnerable to foreign influences. So is any traffic passing through Canada – whether intended by those on either end of the communications link or not, as just another of those peculiarities of our globally interconnected telecom networks. Any sensitive information the U.S. shares directly with Canada, or which passes through Canada unintentionally, is at risk.

Canada's national security apparatus is much more vulnerable to politicization than its American counterparts, to an extent even far greater than witnessed in recent times with the FBI and other federal agencies. Canada simply lacks the governmental checks and balances, as well as a critical and robust press, to fully investigate security risks of this type. While much is made of China's state-sponsored hacking directly into U.S. national security targets, Canada is comparatively low-hanging fruit. Cross-border collaboration on a range of national security topics allows foreign entities to get much, if not all, of what they seek from the Canadian side of the relationship, often with multiple levels and branches of the compromised Canadian government turning a blind eye until after the damage is done.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton has instructed the director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone, to "engage with Canadians" and "educate them on the threat" from Huawei. It is going to take more than education and engagement. The Liberal Party of Canada is already well aware of the risks from Chinese state-linked enterprises operating in critical sectors of the Canadian economy. If Senator Cotton wants to make real progress on this file, and minimize the risks to U.S. national security via Canada's willingness to let Huawei and others do business as they do, then serious economic and other forms of diplomatic pressure will need to be exerted.

Selective papal adulation: Are we holding fast to the faith, or playing favorites?

July 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Today in the United States of America, it is, of course, Independence Day. But in many parts of the Catholic world, today was also (and in some places, still is) the Commemoration of All Holy Popes, a day on which to offer Mass in honor of the impressive band of saintly pontiffs, especially those who do not have a feastday of their own. It therefore gives us an opportunity to reflect on the phenomenon of those who fail to honor the dignity of the papal office and its saintly incumbents because they have a skewed vision of what the papacy is all about.

Today there are cardinals who tell us that the Holy Spirit is speaking through Francis. But what, one might ask, were the same prelates doing while Benedict was Pope—were they following the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking through Benedict? Were they rushing to the defense of Summorum Pontificum – the papal letter acknowledging the freedom of priests to offer the Traditional Latin Mass – as they now rush to the defense of Amoris Laetitia? Or was Ratzinger somehow “beyond the pale of polite society,” whereas Bergoglio is a new and definitive spokesperson of mercy? Perhaps the cardinals of the new paradigm have a secret instinct by which they recognize which popes are mouthpieces of the Spirit and which ones are not.

In reality, we are seeing here an obvious case of a double standard. If the pope is progressive, he is the oracle of God. If he is traditional, he is a stick in the mud, a carryover, a relic of the past, regressive, nostalgic, hard-hearted, rigid, on the wrong side of history. In this way, a personal agenda is allowed to serve as the actual magisterium, or the magisterial filter that strains the gnat of Summorum but swallows the camel of Amoris.

Some have accused traditional Catholics of a similar double standard. They say we do the same thing: we exalt Benedict and hold Francis at arm’s length. But this is not true. A traditional Catholic avoids the dilemma altogether because he is not an ultramontanist to begin with, who thinks that popes should be blindly followed in whatever they say. His allegiance is first and always to Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the clearly and solemnly articulated Magisterium of all the centuries. He knows that these and these alone are the things permanently binding on every member of Christ’s faithful, including—and perhaps especially—the Pope.

Thus, it is no inconsistency for a traditionalist to say: “Benedict XVI was a better pope than Francis,” because his reasoning is: “Benedict followed more closely the teachings and traditions handed down from the past, whereas Francis departs from them in many and notable ways.” It is not at all about pitting one pope against the next, but rather, about seeing all the popes as defenders of the deposit of faith and servants of the servants of God.

Then there is the phenomenon of “selective adulation” in the practical realm. The same people who clamored for the washing of women’s feet, which they finally got (if only for the Novus Ordo), would never dream of emulating Pope Francis’s use of the so-called Benedictine altar arrangement, that is, the six (or seven) candlesticks and crucifix that surmount the papal altar. That is, even their devotion to the Great Leader has arbitrary limits. A progressive will follow the progressivism of the Pope but not his occasional traditional examples. By so doing, they once again show their hand.

Many have said in recent years that the Church is facing another crisis like that of Arianism in the fourth century, only ours is much worse because, in its modernist inspiration, it undermines the very notion of dogma and the very essence of revealed religion.

A colleague of mine once said that our crisis today is not like that of Arianism because we are not dealing today with an obvious denial of doctrine, but with squishy ambiguities and tergiversations. But I am not convinced that this is true, since there are binary questions that face us, and that we cannot avoid answering. One answer proves a man a Catholic, the other shows him an unbeliever.

1. Do you accept doctrinal continuity or not—that is, do you think it matters whether or not contemporary papal and episcopal teaching conforms to that which, in the past, was laid down authoritatively as always and everywhere true?

2. Do you hold there are exceptionless moral rights and wrongs, that is, things that must always be done, and things that must always be avoided, regardless of any and every circumstance? Do you hold that there are precepts we must obey in order to be saved? Is there any good that would justify the committing of some evil, or would make it not evil? Can one ever sin for the sake of a greater good?

3. Is the Pope the guardian of Catholic tradition, or its master and lord?

Each of these questions allows only a yes or no answer. Some in the Church answer one way, some answer the other way. This divides them as much as the divinity of Christ divided the Catholics from the Arians. And there are plenty who are sitting on the fence, trying not to answer the questions, just as there were equivocators and temporizers in the fourth century. But anyone who does not answer rightly a question to which the right answer is already definitively known is condemned as if he were a staunch defender of the wrong answer.